Main ingredients for a productive remote partnership with companies abroad

*Everything what is mentioned below is from personal experience acquired while working with partners in other continents, different time zones, etc. and do not claim to absolute truth

0. Quality. Why zero?  Because when you start remote partnership with other company you should expect it as a constant. You may (because it‘s part of human nature), but you shouldn‘t think „Will I receive a quality code, will my product will work as expected, etc“. From our perspective quality is a basic thing and we shouldn‘t even discuss it as latest best practices and methods should be in use to ensure it. Of course, there may be cases, where company, you are providing remote services to, can have established in-house procedures for quality control, but it should be discussed upfront the start of work and it leads us to the second and one of the most important points – Communication.

1. Communication. From our experience, that is the main ingredient for a smooth collaboration. Without it, the chance that the project will fail increases tremendously. When you are working with your in-house team, you could mostly anytime tap your colleague on the shoulder and ask „Hey, how‘s function X going“. It‘s a little bit different when the project is delegated to the team from outside. Exact time when one or another thing was mentioned starts to play a more significant role. So while working remotely we should complement communication with one very important word – TIMELY. There is always a possibility to miss the deadline with your in-house team, but it‘s a lot of easier to do so while working with remote team. To avoid this communication should be timely and you also need to look for one significant attribute in your possible partner – Proactivness.

2. Proactivness.  If you are always the one , who initiates, the big chance that relationship is more one sided, and one day or another, something could just slip through your fingers and negative consequences will arise. But how to check if the company you are going to work with is proactive before you started to work with them? One of the ways is to look for this just at the beginning while you are still in proposal phase. If the company you contacted just gave you a proposal without asking little or no questions, giving suggestions from their experience, it‘s a big chance that when the actual work starts, you will be the one who pulls everything.

3. Sharing. We like proverb „Sharing is caring“ and from our experience, even when working with teams that are Senior level, there are things that they don’t know or do differently even if there is a simpler way. The same applies otherwise too.  Sharing not only helps to reach synergy, but also is one of main steps towards long-lasting partnership.

All of above mentioned points could be specified a lot, but at this stage we just wanted to share general traits, that may help you while searching for remote team or working with one.

If you will have your insights, need help or advice, feel free to drop us a line at